Not
only is Liszt's music brilliant, not only does he pour his wealth of pearls
and diamonds down the keyboard, but his pieces rise to great climaxes, are
grandiose in style, overleap all boundaries, and whirl you away with the
vehemence of passion.

- Amy Fay
(1844-1928), American pianist, author,

pupil of Tausig, Kullak
and Liszt.

Franz Liszt held a commanding position in the world of
music, his career likened to the passing of some great flaming meteor across
the heavens. Good fairies showered gifts upon him at his cradle and the story
of his later life reads more like an extravagant romance than fact. Not only
did he become one of the most important composers of the nineteenth century
but, beyond that, he was one of the greatest pianists in the history of the
instrument. When asked what he would have been had he not been a musician,
Liszt is said to have replied that he would have been the greatest diplomat in Europe.
As it was, he created a new epoch in the history of the piano. Because the man
and his music were one, it was difficult to separate them. Liszt played as he
looked, and looked as he played. At the piano his face changed, sometimes noble
and tender, sometimes stormy and defiant, sometimes sardonic, Mephistophelean,
and, always underlying everything, expressive of infinite knowledge and power.

The music of other composers was Liszt's to mould,
transcribe, exalt, promote and popularise on the piano. For the music of
Schubert, a composer he declared to be the most poetic of al" he had a
particular affection and sympathy and this is reflected in some sixty
transcriptions of Schubert songs. Many of these were written in the late 1830s
and formed a popular part of his concert programmes during his years as a travelling
virtuoso. Here he was able to express his own enthusiasm for Schubert and to
bring this repertoire to the attention of a wider audience. It has been
observed that these transcriptions, a number of them made towards the end of his
relationship with Countess Marie d'Agoult, the mother of his three children,
during a period spent on the Rhine island of Nonnenwerth, came at a time when
his own leanings were moving away from France and the Paris of his adolescence
towards Germany.

The present release includes fourteen transcriptions of
songs by Schubert. The first of these is among the best known. Schubert's Auf
dem Wasser zu singen (To be sung on the water) is a selling of a poem by
Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg-Stolberg. Liszt's transcription, under the
title Barcarolle, was published in 1838 with a group of twelve similar
transcriptions, eleven of them dedicated to the Countess d' Aragon, and the
twelfth to Marie d' Agoult. Liszt insisted that those who played these song
transcriptions should be aware of the words and that the text should be published
above the transcription, as a song text, not, as his first publisher had, placed
at the head of the transcription. The poem here is in three stanzas: Amid the shimmer
of the reflecting waves glides, like swans, the swaying boat; ah, on gently shimmering
waves of joy glides the soui, like the boat, for from heaven above on the waves
dances the glow of sunset about the boat. In his transcription Liszt tackles
the technical problem of incorporating the singing melody with a piano
accompaniment that has a certain complexity, a problem that faced his rival Thalberg,
who was well known for his incorporation of a singing melody in the centre of
an accompanying texture, where left and right thumbs might play their part.
Liszt introduces the melody at first in the left hand, moving into the alto
register for the second verse and allowing a much more elaborate surrounding
texture in the third, before the climax and a prolonged postlude.

Wasserflut (Flood) is taken from Schubert's 1827
song-cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey), a selling of twelve poems by
Wilhelm Muller. The cycle was transcribed by Liszt in 1839 and published the
following year with a dedication to Princess Elenore Schwarzenberg, sister-in-law
of Cardinal Prince Friedrich von Schwarzenberg. Having left his beloved behind,
the traveller makes his winter journey: Many tears have fallen from my eyes
into the snow; its cold flakes greedily suck in my burning sorrow. Schubert's
autograph has the song in F sharp minor, but it was published in E minor, the
key of Liszt's transcription. Both song and transcription are couched in simple
terms, with the prelude and intervening episodes of Liszt's accompaniment an octave
lower than the original.

Der Muller und der Bach (The Miller and the
Stream) is the nineteenth song in the cycle Die schone Mullerin (The
Fair Daughter of the Miller), in which a love-sick young man, his
apprenticeship finished, sets out into the world: Where a true heart dies of love,
there lilies wither on every bed; then must the full moon go behind the clouds
so that men do not see her tears; then angels cover their eyes, and sob and
sing the soul to rest. The stream answers: And when love escapes from pain, a
little star, a new one, shines in the heaven: then there spring up three roses,
half red and half white, that will never wither again, from the thorns, and the
angels cut off their wings and every morning go down to the earth. The young
miller is not comforted: A little stream, dear little stream, you mean it so
well;, ah, little stream, do you know what love does? Ah, down there, down
there, is cool rest; ah little stream, dear little stream, but sing on. Liszt's
transcription, with an expanded accompaniment, captures admirably the mood of
the song. It was made in 1846 and published the following year in Vienna, with
five other songs out of the Schubert cycle of twenty.

The next two transcriptions are of songs posthumously
assembled into a cycle under the appropriate title Schwanengesang
(Swan-Song) and published by Tobias Haslinger in 1829. Seven of the twelve
poems are by Ludwig Rellstab, which

Schubert had probably intended to publish together, with
six settings of poems by Heine and one of a poem by Johann Gabriel Seidl. Ihr
Bild (Her Picture), by Heine, is sadly reflective: I stood in dark dreams
and looked at her picture and the beloved face strangely began to come to life;
about her lips came a wonderful smile, as tears of sorrow glittered in her
eyes; my tears too flowed down my cheeks, and ah, I cannot believe that I have
lost you. Liszt omits the briefly repeated notes that form a prelude and takes
the opening, as Schubert does, in simple octaves, before elaborating, very skilfully,
what follows.

Standchen (Serenade), a setting of a poem by Rellstab,
the seventh song of Schwanengesang, is among the most familiar, vocally
and in the present transcription. A young man sings of his love: Gently plead
my songs through the night to you, down here in the quiet hedgerow, beloved,
come to me: whispering slender tree-tops murmur in the moon-light, do not fear
the hostile listening of the betrayer, sweet one: do you hear the nightingales
singing? Ah, they plead to you, with sweet complaining notes, they plead for
me... trembling I wait for you, come, make me happy! The second two stanzas
repeat the music of the first two, with the fifth stanza treated differently.
In his transcription Liszt varies the strophic repetition by putting the melody
an octave lower, with the direction quasi Violoncello. He reserves a greater
degree of elaboration for the final stanza, where he himself was accustomed to
add a decorative cadenza, The complete transcription of Schwanengesang
was written in 1838 and 1839 and published in Vienna in 1840 by Haslinger, with
a dedication of the publisher's choosing to Archduchess Sophie, sister-in-law
of the unfor1unate Emperor Ferdinand V and mother of Franz Joseph I.

The work of Shakespeare, known to Goethe and Schiller
par1icularly through the translations by Wieland, had become more widely
familiar in Germany largely thanks to the translations by A.W.Schlegel and Tieck,
Schuber1's Standchen (Serenade), Cloten's musicians' song from the
second act of Shakespeare's play Cymbeline, "Hark, hark, the lark
at Heaven's gate sings, / And Phoebus 'gins arise", transforms the
Elizabethan into another world, redolent of Austria rather than of the
Elizabethan theatre, a mood recaptured by Liszt, whose transcription was
included in the collection of twelve songs of 1838.

The first transcription in the same collection, dedicated
to the Countess d'Aragon, is a version of Schuber1's Sei mir gegrusst (I
greet you) written in 1821 or 1822, a setting of a poem by Friedrich Rucker1
that follows fashionable oriental ism in its content and form, with recurrent
rhymes linking the four stanzas and the repeated line at the end of each: I
greet you, I kiss you! In the transcription the melody is first heard in the
middle voice, shared between right and left hand, but then with increasing elaboration,
arpeggiated chords, and a climax marked pesante molto and con passione.

Trockne Blumen (Withered Flowers) is the
eighteenth song in the cycle Die schone

Mullerin and was transcribed by Liszt in 1846. The
young miller is reaching despair, and now the flowers that his beloved gave him
must go with him to the grave, and when she passes by his grave-mound she will
think in her hear1 that his love was true. Originally in E minor, Liszt's
version is in C minor and opens with fuller, arpeggiated chords. The second
verse has the melody in octaves, with a left hand accompaniment that brings
hand-crossing and a wider range and fuller chords in the arrangement of the
major section that marks the onset of spring, when winter has passed. As in the
original, there is a final, gentle postlude.

Schuber1 set only one poem by the Tubingen poet and
medievalist Ludwig Uhland,

This was Fruhlingsglaube (Faith in Spring),
written in 1821. It is included as the seventh of the 1838 collection of Liszt
transcriptions. The poem greets the spring, a portent that everything now will
change for the better, the hear1 forget its torment, as the earth blossoms. The
transcription transposes the melody, which first appears in the upper voice, to
be answered in the tenor register. A greater degree of elaboration is left to
the last verse, which makes some technical demands on the player, before a brief
cadenza leads to the final ritornello.

The Ruckert setting Du bist die Ruh is among the
best known of all Schubert songs: You are my rest and gentle peace, you are my
yearning and what stills it.

Liszt's transcription, the third in the 1838 collection,
embarks at once on the melody, in the tenor register, then to be moved an
octave higher, with accompanying figuration that calls for hand-crossing and
considerable enrichment of texture as the song reaches its climax, followed by
a silence. The music resumes, gently at first, moving forward to a second
climax and pause, followed by the final repetition and brief postlude, with
which Schuber1's song ends.

Der Doppelganger (The Double), a setting of a poem
by Heine, was the thir1eenth song in the cycle Schwanengesang, Liszt
darkens the mood by confining the four-bar prelude to the lower register, so
that the vocal line, marked declamato in the transcription, can also appear in
a darker-hued baritone register. Still is the night, the streets are quiet, in
this house my beloved lived. The third line of the text now appears in the
middle of the accompanying texture, in the same register as before: Long ago
you left the town, yet the house still stands in the same place. Liszt now doubles
the melody, in octaves: There stands a man and stares up, rings his hands in
sorrow. This moves forward to a dramatic climax, as the moonlight reveals the watcher's
own figure, before his eyes. Liszt now introduces an optional and ghostly tremolo,
as the poet addresses the ghostly Doppelganger, seeking to know the reason for
his aping of the lover's pain and grief. The Schubert scholar Richard Capell
has drawn attention to a possible reminiscence of the Dies ir83 of the Mass for
the Dead in the sinister accompaniment, its mood intensified in Liszt's haunted
transcription.

Schubert published his setting of Goethe's Gretchen am
Spinnrade (Gretchen at the Spinning-Wheel) in 1821, seven years after its
composition in 1814. The text is taken from the first part of Goethe's Faust
and is sung by Gretchen as she spins and thinks of her lover, the rejuvenated
Faust, who will betray her: My peace is gone, my heart is heavy, I shall never,
never again find peace: whenever I do not have him here it is the grave for me,
the whole world is poisoned. The song reaches a climax as Gretchen recalls her
handsome lover's features, the pressure of his hand, and, ah, his kiss. The
original accompaniment reflects the turning of the spinning-wheel and the rhythm
of the treadle, and this important feature of the work is preserved by Liszt,
who adds the vocal line to what is already a demanding enough insistent
accompanying figuration. The treadle at last has to give way, as the song nears
its climax, and the transcription incorporates a more elaborate broken chord
accompaniment, leading to the climactic chords that accompany Und ach, sein Kuss!
(And ah, his kiss!). The spinning-wheel resumes its earlier rhythm, but Liszt
gradually introduces a much fuller texture to the end of the song text,
followed, as in the original work, by the continuing, fading motion of the
wheel. The transcription belongs to the 1838 collection.

The concluding two song transcriptions are Der
Wanderer (The Wanderer) and Aufenthalt (Resting-Place), the second of these
from the cycle Schwanengesang.

After his setting of Goethe's Erlkonig, Schubert's
setting of the poem Der Wanderer, by Schmidt of Lubeck enjoyed the
greatest popularity of all his songs during his lifetime and for may years
afterwards. The poem itself seems to epitomize the mood of romanticism: I come
from the mountains, the valley steams, the sea roars: I wander in silence, I am
not happy, and always the sighing question: where? ... Where are you, my
beloved country? Sought, sensed and never found: the country so green with
hope, the country where my roses bloom.... A ghostly breath answers me: There,
where you are not, there is happiness. In this eleventh of the 1838 collection of
transcriptions Liszt indulges in greater histrionics, allowing himself dramatic
effects, sweeping arpeggios and passages in rapid octaves, before the
mysterious tremolando and emphatic final words of the song, and the following
gentler postlude.

Aufenthalt, by Rellstab, is again preoccupied with
essentially romantic concerns:

Rushing river, blustering forest, sheer rock is my
resting-place, as wave follows wave, so my tears flow ever anew: high in the
tree-tops there rises trembling, so my heart beats without cease and as the
primal ore of the rock, there remains always the same pain for me. In his
transcription Liszt allows a simpler version to the arrangement that shares the
melody between the two hands. He adds chromatic illustration of the mood,
echoing the intense poetic emotion of the text. For the second stanza Liszt moves
the melody, now in octaves, to a higher register, and allows himself even greater
dramatic and dynamic licence, as the opening words of the song are repeated in
conclusion.

Based on information supplied by Victor and Marina A. Ledin,
Encore Consultants.